Privacy fears as Google hits road

HIGHLY detailed street-level photographs of much of Australia
will soon be published by Google, but the top executive in charge
of the project is making no assurances that private residences,
faces and numberplates will be obscured.

A US couple is suing the search engine for invasion of privacy
after photographs of their home, on a street clearly marked with a
private road sign, appeared on the Street View feature of Google
Maps.

Since the case came to light this week other instances have
emerged where the Google- branded cars with roof-mounted cameras
travelled down gravel paths to obtain images of private residences,
which were uploaded to Google Maps without permission.

Even in images taken from public streets, there are countless
examples of people who were unwittingly snapped in embarrassing or
compromising positions.

Google global vice-president Marissa Mayer said the company
hoped to launch Street View in Australia this year, but when it
came to protecting people's privacy Google was at the mercy of the
"flaws of the real world and human error".

"If the road isn't very clearly marked as a private road, or if
the driver misses a sign, there will be occasional places where we
make a mistake," said Ms Mayer, who controls the direction of
Google's web search, news, images and maps.

Ms Mayer is due to speak at the Search Marketing Expo in Sydney
today.

In the light of the backlash by privacy campaigners after Street
View launched in the US last year, Ms Mayer said Google was
developing technology to blur faces and numberplates, but she did
not know whether it would be ready in time for the local
launch.

Street View is available for more than 40 US cities so far and
Google's picture-snapping cars have been traversing Australian
capital city streets since late last year.

The feature will allow people to explore the country at ground-
level via the internet for the first time.

The Australian Privacy Foundation has called on Google to
conduct a "public privacy impact assessment" and accept legal
liability under Australian law if a person's privacy is
invaded.

Google says people are able to flag inappropriate or sensitive
images for reviewing and removal by the company, but the process is
fairly lengthy and by that time the damage has often been done.

Sensitive images from the US launch of Street View 
including a woman exposing her G-string, a man walking into an
adult bookshop and another man apparently relieving himself on the
pavement  have since been removed but not before they were
spread across the web.

Ms Mayer also revealed Google's plans to expand its web search
product into almost every area of daily life.

The company's goal was to allow people to search the web
wherever they were via their car, mobile phone or even
voice-activated telephone services, she said.

Ms Mayer said she hoped Google searches could soon evolve to the
point where they were able to answer direct questions and
personalise results to include recommendations from users'
friends.